Virgin Australia expands capacity to traveler

Virgin Australia on Wednesday confirmed the airline would provide additional capacity over the coming months to minimize the impact of ongoing Qantas industrial action on the Australian travel and tourism industry. "Over the last three months, we have increased our capacity around Australia, adding more than 31,000 seats each week, including expanding our presence in the very important Perth market, where we have introduced wide-body aircraft and business class seats," Virgin Australia group of airlines chief executive officer (CEO) John Borghetti said in a statement on Wednesday. Borghetti said 6,800 seats had been added to its Perth routes, with business class available on all flights from the East Coast. "In addition to this, we have already put plans in place to add extra capacity over the next few weeks, including 3,000 additional seats each week up to 30 October and the addition of a fifth daily return service from Melbourne to Perth commencing 20 December, adding a further 2,300 seats each week," Borghetti said. "We will continue to work with all of our alliance partners who are keen to help us support the Australian traveling public and ensure tourism is not affected, both domestically and internationally." The Australian second largest airline said that with all its alliances in place, Virgin Australia's global network capacity share in and out of Australia was forecast to be around equal to that of the oneworld airline alliance in 2012. Qantas, but not Virgin Australia, is the Australian member of the 12-airline oneworld alliance.